


Sivir's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day/Week/Month

by LogosMinusPity



Category: League of Legends
Genre: F/F, Implied Sivir/Cassiopeia, Samira is fabulous and I love her, Shurima, Sivir just NEEDS PEOPLE TO LEAVE HER ALONE, compliant based off most recent canon and the official story Bloodline, shuriman shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26687383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogosMinusPity/pseuds/LogosMinusPity
Summary: Sivir is intent on just trying to get away from the mess that is Shurima. It seems like everything in Shurima itself is intent on preventing that.
Relationships: Kai'Sa/Sivir (League of Legends)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 78





	Sivir's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day/Week/Month

If there was one thing that could make  _ everything _ \--and by any holy or unholy power on the whole of Valoran, Sivir truly meant  _ everything _ \--even worse, it was Samira.

The whole of the last week--or was it a month now, really?--was already a total wash in Sivir’s books. First was the whole sham contract to go exploring the bowels of Shuriman tombs with the Noxians. What had Sivir gotten for all of that effort with the beautiful DuCouteau noblewoman? A knife in the gut, literally! No gold, no payment, just her own idiocy and at the cost of her own life, all because she had been too blind to see the obsession Cassiopeia had wasn’t with Sivir--it was with her weapon.

Of course, she was alive. A fair reason to be grateful by anyone’s reckoning. Sivir definitely thought she had met her end of line as she bled out on the hard floor of a forgotten and dead tomb, the world going gray around her.

She would have liked to say that a divine power descended from the heavens to staunch her bleeding and grant her second life. Really, Sivir didn’t remember much of anything. Blood loss was like that.

What she did recall, with greatly unfortunate clarity, arising whole and healed from a sacred spring, cradled in the arms of an Ascended himself. An Ascended who claimed that he was the last Emperor of Shurima, Azir, and that Sivir was his great-great-great-great and many more great’s last descendant, bearing his gods’ blessed blood.

Madness.

The sort of madness that Sivir had learned to turn tail and run from years ago if she wanted to keep living a healthy, gold-filled life.

So, she had high-tailed it out of the reborn heart of the Lost Empire and away from the bird-emperor as soon as her feet were back under her, hoping to leave everything about the experience firmly where it belonged: in the past like a bad dream. 

No such luck.

All the years of mercenary work had cultivated a strong reputation for herself (Sivir liked to think of it as the  _ best reputation  _ for herself in all of Shurima), and so Sivir was used to having to watch her back. What she wasn’t used to was having a literal sentient and magical floating sarcophagus trying to track her down across the whole of Shurima in a murderous rage all because of some hereditary bloodline that Sivir still couldn’t care less about. Oh, and the army of zealots at said sarcophagus’s command. And the fact that this only put a growing bounty on Sivir’s name from the endless list of past enemies she made who were now looking for an opportunistic shot of revenge on her.

Given that Xerath had destroyed an entire city in his wake simply for the unintended crime of harboring Sivir’s half-dead self, there was a certain degree of urgency Sivir now took in the motto of “keep it moving”.

It was a motto that thankfully her newfound companions didn’t complain about, short of Nasus periodically trying to insist that Sivir would be best protected if she simply returned to Azir. Fat chance of that.

_ A stoneweaver, a jackal-headed Ascended, and the most wanted mercenary in all of Shurima walk into a bar… _

If she weren’t so bone-dead tired from all of the constant being on the road, Sivir might have chuckled at her own joke. As it was, she only had the energy to take a deep drink of her ale. The lukewarm drink was one of the few pleasures she could currently afford herself.

It was a pleasure that was all too quickly ruined when, to top off everything, the last person she wanted to see in all of Valoran somehow entered the tiny bar and decided to take a seat directly across from her. There was only room enough for one legendary bladed mercenary in all of Shurima, and Sivir wanted to groan in pain when she saw her all-too frequent rival for notoriety in the Shuriman sands.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the mercenary of the Dead Sands herself! And aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

Samira’s voice--which Sivir had gone a pleasant few years without having to hear--grated on her ears like rusty nails being stabbed into her brain. It was full of self-sure swagger, and Sivir couldn’t think of anyone she was privately more embarrassed to be seen by in her current state.

“Great Weaver…” came the whisper of surprise from Taliyah.

The sentiment, Sivir supposed, was not entirely unfair.

Samira settled across from Sivir as though she owned the entire room, and even Sivir had to admit, the woman commanded attention. Tall, muscular, and giving off an air of reckless bravado that came only from the experience so clearly marked on her own skin. Ink and scars alike made no secret that this was a woman who knew exceedingly well how to use the firearms at her side as much as the broad, single-edged blade at her back.

Samira moved like a flame through the dry and dusty tinder that was the small bar, alighting all eyes on her with the ease of a showwoman.

Sivir hated that about her. Sivir hated quite a lot about Samira, not least of which was the fact that she was currently here, next to Sivir, and not anywhere else in the whole of Runeterra. She had never been pleased by the competition for work and notoriety in their homeland, and certainly didn’t feel any different about that fact now, particularly when Samira looked to be faring quite a bit better than Sivir had in the past month.

“Still have both eyes, I see,” muttered Sivir, as her own way of greeting, shrugging the sand colored cloak she had grown used to wearing better over herself. She didn’t want to attract any more attention than what she already had been as of late.

Samira gave a rich and full-throated laugh, hardly put off. She leaned back into the seat she had taken--a seat that she had most certainly  _ not  _ been invited to sit in--and let her vibrant good eye linger over Sivir before drifting sideways to Taliyah.

“Don’t think we’ve met before. And you don’t look like you’re from around these parts.”

“I’m Taliyah.”

Sivir wanted to bang her forehead into the table. How many times did she have to tell Taliyah not to be so, so...open about everything?

“And I’m Samira. Consider it a pleasure to meet you.”

Already, Samira had a flicker of gold in one hand, though Sivir hadn’t even seen her reach for her coin purse. The coin bounced in the air once before Samira flicked it across the table toward Taliyah.

Sivir caught the coin out of the air before it could even reach fully across the table. Probably would have struck Taliyah on the forehead before she thought to do anything.

“Don’t accept money from strangers,” Sivir snapped, flicking the coin right back with as much force as possible.

Of course Samira caught it easily, and her infuriating smile only grew when Taliyah protested. “But I thought you said that when gold was involved--”

“Forget what I said before.” Sivir managed to keep her voice low and from descending into a full on growl of displeasure. “This is what I’m telling you now.”

“O-oh.”

There was a long and drawn out pause where Sivir could practically see how much Taliyah was struggling with the desire to ask more questions. Then Sivir sighed and reached for her own coin purse, fetching a silver and handing it over directly to Taliyah. 

“Go get something for yourself. And give us some space for a bit. We can talk more later.”

Meaning, Sivir would actually let Taliyah ask her fair share of questions. Fair share meaning one, or maybe three if she was in a better mood.

They had been traveling together enough now that Taliyah didn’t need telling twice. She practically bounced away, moving in that odd, half-skipping gait on the balls of her feet that reminded Sivir distinctly of a bird.

Thinking of birds made her think of Azir, though. And thinking of Azir reminded her of Noxus, which reminded her of people in the employ of the Dark Empire, which meant that her attention was brought right back to Samira.

Unfortunately.

“Kid’s interesting,” laughed Samira, and the sound grated on Sivir’s ears.

“That ‘kid’ can throw boulders with her mind.” Sivir added a bit more bite to her words. As much as all the questions were grating, the reality was that Taliyah had a good heart in her. A better heart, Sivir would privately admit, than anyone Sivir had known in many, many years. Sivir had her life to show for it, after all., and it was a debt that she would not soon--if ever--forget.

“So she  _ is  _ a stoneweaver, then…” mused Samira, her one good eye trailing after Taliyah.

Sivir recognized the keen look of interest from Samira that was practically already spoiling for a fight to test herself against a new and formidable opponent. But years of ingrained paranoid self-preservation and a natural nose for profit also made her recognize something else: Samira had information, and her casual reference to stoneweaving--something not even Sivir had heard of until Taliyah had saved her life--revealed as much.

“How did you find me, Samira?” When Samira turned back to her and started to open her mouth, Sivir pressed a fraction harder. “And don’t give me any bullshit either. I don’t believe in coincidence, not in this broken down and sad excuse for a desert caravanserai.”

Samira took a deep drink from her own tankard. “Can’t a girl be sentimental for her homeland?”

“Bullshit.” Sivir’s limited store of patience was rapidly evaporating.

The few patrons of the bar that remained close to Sivir’s table still shifted and started to take their leave, possessing little appetite to be close to either the most notorious mercency in Shurima or the woman who frequently challenged her for that position.

The single, green eye rolled in response, but Samira obliged at last.

“Not like you’re that hard to find, even if you have been moving at a pace to put a horse-race to shame. You have a literal overgrown puppy dog standing watch outside and all too eager to profess his rather interesting quest to protect the last living descendent of the royal Shuriman bloodline. How does it feel to be so popular, Princess?”

Anger and embarrassment alike made Sivir’s cheeks burn. Of all of the absolutely awful things that had no real bearing on her livelihood but that  _ she couldn’t bear to live with _ , Samira of all people calling her ‘Princess’ ranked top on the list.

“Nasus…” she growled, half turning back toward the entrance and already reaching for her crossblade. “I’m gonna murder him.”

Samira brought her attention right back around again. “Aw, don’t be mean to him. He actually was doing his best at being a good guard dog until I got him talking more. Pensive for an Ascended, isn’t he?”

She continued on lightly without even waiting for Sivir to interject. 

“Besides,  _ I  _ hardly have any questionable interest in your blood--ick, by the way. I do find it curious the pace you’ve been putting on with your odd little band, though. Never knew the Battle Mistress as someone who worked well with others. Also never knew her to be one for running away.”

That burned, and beneath the burn of offended outrage lurked the ever-present specter of fear. Fear of what had been released from the locked tomb, fear of what had brought ruin to Vekaura simply because Sivir was there, and fear of why it hunted her even now.

As had become a habit, she pushed down the fear and met Samira eye for eye.

“Do you have anything worthwhile to add or are you just here to waste my time?”

Samira offered that wide and infuriating grin that always seemed to say ‘I know more than you do’, and started reaching out for Sivir’s weapon, where it was gently nestled against the side of the table.

“Why run when you can fight?” came the suggestion, as idiotically simplistic as Samira. She never could keep her hands to herself either when shiny weapons were involved.

“Touch my crossblade, and you’ll lose more than just an eye.” Sivir spoke in a low whisper that carried only to Samira, whose face immediately darkened like a thundercloud at the threat.

It was no idle thing to threaten her, and for a moment Sivir was certain that Samira would reach for either her own blade or one of her damned guns. Or worse, she would call Sivir’s bluff and keep making for the crossblade.

Truth was, Sivir had no desire to engage in a test of combat with Samira. The woman was a hellion, and Sivir had seen first hand how little regard the native-Shuriman turned to Noxian-employ held for her own safety in battle. The lost eye was testament enough to that. Had it changed a thing about her fighting? Hardly. If anything, Samira was even more reckless with gun and blade alike since then.

A few months ago, Sivir might have been equally reckless, might have welcomed crossing blades to see which child of the desert was truly the better mercenary between them.

That was before Sivir had powerlessly watched her very lifeforce bleed away from her.

Though healed, the great scar across her midsection pulled in the echo of a memory, and the cold touch of death squeezed around her heart.

She held her stare, though, and prayed that Samira wouldn’t see the fear that secretly plagued her blood now.

Thankfully, they did not come to blows.

The grin on Samira’s face wavered for a moment, then only grew. She fluttered her eyelashes and Sivir could have gagged. “You always have such a way with words, Sivir. Right to a girl’s heart.

“Over your dead body,” retorted Sivir.

“I think the phrase is supposed to be, ‘over my dead body’, yes?”

“Exactly,” Sivir deadpanned. “ _ Yours _ .”

“You wound me, Princess.”

“I don’t do Noxians.” Not anymore. “And I’ll do more than wound you if you keep calling me that.”

“Just because I work for Noxians doesn’t make me any less Shuriman than before. Besides,” Samira leaned in with conspiratorial smirk, and Sivir’s stomach bottomed out with the sheer dread of knowing what was about to be said before it even happened. “I’ve heard differently about you on the Noxian front.”

At that, Sivir stood, pushing away from the table angrily. She had had more than her fill of Samira’s wise-cracks at her own expense to last for the next lifetime and then some.

“I have better things to do than waste away my day in the same universe as you.”

Like get moving. And fast.

“Peace! Peace!” Samira raised both of her hands, in a rare gesture of placation. “I meant no harm.”

“Fat chance of that,” muttered Sivir.

Samira flared her nostrils in her own irritation at the side comment. “I can see I hit a nerve. I know of the DuCouteaus, but they’re hardly my employers. Least of all the younger sister. She’s a schemer. And the intel is that she paid dearly for her latest scheme.”

That piqued Sivir’s attention more than it had a right to.

“Did she now?”

“Something about trying to steal ancient magics beyond her ken and now being cursed into a half-snake, if the reports are to be believed. Quite the interesting tale of how she even managed to gain access to the dread tomb she was seeking in Shurima.”

Samira’s gaze dropped down to Sivir’s midsection, which was exposed and visible since she had stood. There was no question what she was looking at.

Sivir fought the urge to cover the white and raised scar that was testament to her own lethal betrayal, run through from behind. So, the whole of the ordeal was already known, and Cassiopeia had gotten away, if not unscathed from the curse of the tomb. That brought Sivir some small measure of satisfaction.

She knew better than to indulge in it for too long.

“What are you doing here, Samira?”

It was abundantly clear by now that Samira had a full report on far more regarding both Shurima and Sivir’s own personal details that Sivir was comfortable with. 

“Reconnaissance, or those were the orders I have.”

“How wonderfully vague.”

“What can I say?” shrugged Samira, and the myriad of gold adornments in her hair clinked and glittered in the tavern lighting, drawing Sivir’s eye to them. “The reports my captain related to me are astoundingly vague and chaotic themselves. Tales of a city reborn from the desert sand, of Ascended mad gods on the loose, and of the ruin of Icathia opening yet again. There’s a lot going on in the Dead Sands these days, if half the missives are to be believed.”

The last bit caught Sivir’s attention, though she hid it. Of Icathia and its dead history, though, she had not heard of anything, granted, she had been much more focused on the other news. News that had been filled aplenty with talk of Xerath and his mad zealots (it was the news Sivir kept tabs on the most, for the sake of her own preservation) as well as talk of the lost Emperor of Shurima, reborn to bring them back to ancient greatness. 

She was too proud to ask any more, and instead rolled her eyes as Samira continued.

“Besides, you know I jump at the opportunity to revisit my homeland. And I even get to see little old you. It’s been years since our last time!”

Sivir did make a sound of disgust at that. “Do  _ not _ talk like we have any measure of camaraderie unless you’re trying to make me ill.”

“Come off it, Princess!” At the affectation, Sivir swore the whole room could hear her molars grinding together. “I think we could make a rather good team if you give me the chance, and I don’t say that about practically anyone.”

Sivir scoffed, loudly. “As if you’re on anyone’s team.”

“Isn’t that what I should be asking about you, oh mercenary of the sands?” taunted Samira. “Since when does the vaulted Sivir travel with any except those who provide her payment in gold?”

Sivir felt her blood pressure shoot for the heavens, and she had to give a silent count to three before answering between clenched teeth.

“The dog won’t stop following me. And the stoneweaver…” She trailed off as they both turned to look across the bar at Taliyah, who was talking quite animatedly and happily with a rather gruff and now bewildered looking patron. Sivir sighed and pinched the growing headache between her eyes. “I need to find somewhere actually safe to drop her off. Where she won’t get herself kidnapped, or killed, or...or whatever mess she’s going to get herself into. Shurima isn’t safe.”

Samira raised her exquisitely expressive eyebrows, a motion unhindered by possessing only a single eye.

“Careful, or you might start sounding like you care about something that’s not made of gold.”

And that was enough of Samira for the time being...time meaning the rest of eternity. Sivir had hardly gotten even a fraction of the answers she wanted to wring from the throat of the other woman, but she was also past the point of caring to sit here and tolerate Samira’s presence to find out anything further. It was more than past time to get moving again. They had been too long in this small caravanserai.

Sivir stood, downed the rest of her ale, and slammed her tankard back onto the table none too gently.

“Goodbye, Samira. Enjoy the rest of your employment-sanctioned vacation eating sand.”

With that, Sivir took her leave.

* * *

“Can you not  _ do something about her _ ?”

In Sivir’s attempt to keep from shouting--that would give Samira far too much satisfaction--her voice emerged like a viper’s hiss. Hissing reminded her of snakes, which now reminded her of Cassiopeia, which only reminded her even more of Samira, and that served to only make her blood pressure explode yet again.

“I do not understand your enmity with this woman,” Nasus intoned, his voice infuriatingly calm and befuddled. “You are both children of Shurima. You both have a place in the fight that lays ahead for our people.”

Just the sort of answer Sivir did not want to hear, and she made a noise that probably sounded something like “ARGHLGAFAK”, which Samira most certainly did hear.

That much was made clear by the catcall whistle she gave from thirty paces behind them (knowingly just out of range of Sivir’s crossblade, should the weapon be thrown in a fit of deserving rage). When all three of them turned at the whistle, Samira completed the absolute ignominity of it all by blowing a kiss, and then waving her fingers at them while calling back out.

“Don’t worry about me back here, Princess! A girl like me can handle herself.”

Sivir was just about to say to hell with it and yell some  _ very _ choice words back when Taliyah trodded over, confusion apparent on her face.

“Why does she keep calling you ‘Princess’?”

“Because not only does Sivir wield Setaka’s sacred blade, the Chalicar, but she bears the royal blood of--”

“Because she’s an insufferable smart-ass, who should just  _ keep her nose out of other people’s business! _ ” Sivir interrupted Nasus, ending with a very pointed yell that was directed back at Samira.

There was a very long and very awkward silence after the fact, which was, predictably, broken by Taliyah. The reality of having travelled together so much already (to say nothing of having nursed Sivir’s grievous wounds and health back) was that Taliyah had grown too used to Sivir’s moods to be intimidated by her; and Sivir knew that her bark held no real bite when it came to the young woman who had unquestioningly defended her and saved her life multiple times over.

So it was that she gritted her teeth and reminded herself to  _ deal with it _ when Taliyah, of course, asked another damnable question.

“Why do you dislike her so much?”

Sivir was too irritated to even think of censoring her answer, so she was bluntly honest instead. “Because she’s an insufferable ass.”

Then she turned and continued stomping down the sandy road rather than waiting for a response. She was being childish, she knew, but she also didn’t care.

She had most certainly not invited Samira along with them; Samira, in typical fashion, had invited herself, tailing Sivir, Nasus, and Taliyah as they had left the caravanserai and headed further south, away from the heart of the Dead Sands.

Sivir was furious, but also powerless to do much about it beyond fume unless she wanted to instigate a fight. And fighting anyone who she didn’t have to was on the bottom of her priority list right now, particularly if that opponent was as skilled as she knew Samira was.

So it was that, begrudgingly, all four of them camped together as the darkness fell and the daytime heat quickly dissipated into nighttime chill. Sivir started a fire with ease from what mixture of tinder and fuel they could find, not terribly concerned about anyone finding them. The desert was vast, and she doubted anyone was within leagues of them at this point. After all, few camped in the sands if they could avoid it, and fewer still traveled through the sands without the guidance of a large and guarded caravan.

Even so, Nasus sat on the far edge of the circle of light from the campfire, ever alert and ever watchful as he looked back in the direction of Shurima proper. Sivir sat with her back facing where the Dead Sands lay, and tried not to think about it.

“It’s always good to make new friends on the road.”

Sivir clucked her tongue at Taliyah’s comment, but the sound was covered by the snapping of the fire.

“And no better place to cement it than over a shared meal,” agreed Samira.

“Speak for yourself,” grumbled Sivir, rotating the sticks of meat as they continued to cook. At least Nasus didn’t need to eat. Perks of being Ascended. “Now I know it really was no coincidence that you happened upon me at the last caravanserai.”

“Don’t be mad now. I wasn’t lying about my reconnaissance order. It’s just that given half the continent seems currently fixated in violently spilling your blood, I figured coming along for the ride was my best shot at seeing some interesting action.”

Samira was, at the very least, forthright. Sivir knew she never need worry about being stabbed in the back by her, and so there was a small amount of vague reassurance knowing that if Xerath did catch up with them again, Samira would no doubt dive headlong into a fight against the sorcerer--which would give Sivir plenty of time to escape and then some.

“Where exactly are you headed toward, by the way?” Samira pulled out a large piece of citrus fruit from her bags, and something about the completely innocent way she asked the question immediately had Sivir’s hackles up.

“Away,” she answered a tad more violently than she meant to. A shudder passed through her, and she told herself it was from the nightly cold. “Just...away. Hopefully somewhere I can get some normal business again.”

“Business can no longer be normal for Shurima.”

Nasus’s deeply resonant tone hung in the air, pensive and almost weary.

“The locked tomb has been breached, and Xerath is free. The Lost Emperor has arisen, and with him so, too, has Shurima. The soul of Shurima is now bared and bleeding with war. Whomsoever wins this may very well decide the fate of our world. I must face my brother eventually, and you must face your destiny, Sivir.”

“Stop that already, will you?” When her voice started to raise, Sivir paused to swallow. Then she forced her pitch back down to normal, willing herself not to get upset. Not again. But, dammit, she hadn’t asked for any of this. “You don’t even know what Azir is going to, what he wants. I don’t owe anything to him.”

“And what do you owe to Shurima? To the land and to the people here?”

Sivir refused to look in Nasus’s direction. “No, no, no! I don’t owe anyone anything. I don’t do the whole hero business. It’s bad for  _ my  _ business.”

“That’s fair,” added Samira, not even looking up from the large citrus fruit she was currently peeling and dividing up with a knife. For once she was actually agreeing with Sivir. “Heroics don’t pay the bills. In fact, they usually increase them.”

“Are you a mercenary, too?” asked Taliyah. She was sitting closer to Samira, and curiosity practically bubbled up from her.

“I’m not a mercenary, little dove,” Samira practically cooed. “I am a special operative.”

“What exactly does being a special operative entail?”

“It means I get to go out on missions that are deemed too dangerous to ask of others.”

Taliyah’s mouth formed a wide and surprised ‘oh’. “Why do you have to do that then? Or why are you asked to take risks that no one else would?”

It was, clearly, just the sort of question Samira was hoping to be asked, and she practically glowed in the firelight. “Because I like the challenge! Daring odds, legendary fights, epic escapes...no one beats me when it comes to style and substance for fighting.”

She finished by handing out slices of the fruit she had been cutting up. Sivir shoved the citrus sullenly into her mouth.

“I even get a code name,” confided Samira, and Sivir rolled her eyes from across the flames. “The Desert Rose.”

Sivir tried to drown out the rest of the conversation--which was largely Samira going on about the most vainglorious of her escapades. She was only partially successful.

However, as they finished cleaning up and prepared for bed, Taliyah approached Sivir, and the young stoneweaver’s face was drawn and solemn.

“Did you mean what you said before? About not owing anything to anyone?”

Only from Taliyah could such a question make Sivir flinch.

“I didn’t mean that about you, Taliyah. I meant what I said when we first started traveling. You saved my life, and I owe you a debt for that which I won’t forget.”

Rather seeming to reassure her, it only made Taliyah’s brow draw together even tighter. “But what about Shurima? And all the people here? What’s going to happen here?”

“That’s not my problem.” As soon as she said it, Sivir felt--for the first time in a very, very long time--guilty. “Listen. There’s nothing wrong with taking care of yourself first and foremost. You’re the only person who has to live with you for the rest of your life. No one else out there will suddenly take care of you and make your problems go away. You can only count on yourself at the end of the day. That’s it. It’s that or you end up dead.”

She wasn’t sure if she was repeating that old mantra to Taliyah, or more to herself.

Either way, sleep did not come quickly that night to Sivir. She stared up at the stars in the sky that were older than Runeterra itself, and tossed and turned with the burden of knowledge that she would have much rather just burned and be done with.

She knew now, after all, the history she had unwillingly inherited.

But it also didn’t change the decades of how Sivir had learned to live. She had lived her entire life as an orphan, no siblings and no parents to ever speak of. The mercenary life had been the only one that ever fit her, because gold was the cleanest of all relationships: purely transactional.

It occurred to Sivir then, in some small and vulnerable part of her brain, that she was not actually very good with people--not in the deep, meaningful way that Taliyah seemed to embrace, or in the sacrificial and duty-bound way that Nasus lived by; not even, it seemed, in the casual understanding of how she fit in with the worlds around her that Samira seemed to content with. 

Not for the first time, as she looked at the constellations, that same small part of Sivir wondered why she was who she was. Why her? Why now? Why did any of it matter? Why did it have to be her?

She rolled over and forced her eyes to close, trying not to think about her two sleeping compatriots, or the silent and ever watchful figure of Nasus just a stone’s throw away.

Maybe it would have been better if Azir had simply let her die.

* * *

Samira would crow ever afterward that her hunch of sticking with Sivir in order to get some action had been spot on.

Just what sort of action they saw, however, none of them could have expected.

The sun was burning high in the sky overhead as they trudged their way along the old road through the dunes and scattered underbrush. Sivir was not sure when they began to realize something was wrong, only that it struck them all at the same time.

Sivir already had one hand on her crossblade and was turning to instinctively look for the one other person she trusted to have the same gut instinct. Samira met her gaze with a pistol in hand and the other already drawing her own blade.

“What…?”

“Something’s wrong with the ground here!” Taliyah yelled, and her voice was high pitched with the fear of the unknown. “Something’s changing!”

The ground started to shake, but not from a great quake. The air darkened and the sand trembled, and then it was as though someone was tearing the world apart between their hands.

“Icathia!” shouted Nasus, and Sivir was confused. They were leagues and leagues away from the ancient ruins that had once been Icathia. Then he shouted again and it all suddenly made sense. “The devils of Icathia! The mouth of hell opens before us! Grant us your strength, my fallen battle brethren! Our ancient foe rears!”

With a screech that was felt more than heard, the very fabric of reality ripped open, and a great wound in the world spewed forth chaos..

A world that was not theirs opened before them, seething with darkness and purple light, and great, insect like creatures scuttled out of it shrieking and jumping, claws and mandibles clicking with saliva and clear intent.

Sivir felt ill, taken with a cold sweat that was not natural. A quick glance at both Samira and Taliyah revealed the same sickly pallor on both of their faces.

The Ascended, however, seemed unaffected.

The sand swirled around Nasus, and he suddenly grew in size and stature, wielding a double-bladed axe many times larger than the one he normally held. With no fear, he stepped into the fray.

“For the fallen!” He roared, and his axe cleaved a swathe in the small army of Void creatures that now spilled into the sands of Shurima.

It took a second for Sivir to blink herself back to wakefulness, and another second after that to think to do something.

By that point, both Samira and Taliyah were already moving. Samira, predictably, was diving in, a hurricane of bullets and blades with a grin like a devil painted on her face; this was, after all, the sort of challenge she had been waiting for.

Taliyah was far more reserved, and for that, Sivir was grateful. She was a powerful stoneweaver, but still young, and Sivir privately worried for her. Yet she called up stones from beneath the sand, throwing them with a precision superior to any archer.

Last to join, Sivir began to spin her crossblade through the denizens of the Void, fighting back the worst of the sickly and unnatural cast of fear that the opening to the Void seemed to have ensorcered them with.

Yet it was not enough.

The creatures were like a plague, spilling endlessly outward, crawling over the dead bodies of the first, and second, and third waves of the other voidlings without pause or thought. Gradually, but surely, they were getting overwhelmed.

It was Taliyah who struggled first, and Sivir caught it quickly. There were simply not enough stones to kill every voidling, as more creatures skittered toward her, she had to summon up a wall of stone for protection.

One creature simply jumped over the wall, claws extended toward its target.

Sivir threw her blade, aiming true and refusing to let her own life debt go unpaid.

A blur of motion and color flew ahead of Sivir’s crossblade, moving faster than anything she had ever seen.

An explosion of light struck the voidlings there, and they disintegrated into nothing.

It was only then that Sivir saw it wasn’t a weapon that had been thrown ahead of her own crossblade, but a woman. Sivir had only a moment to take in the strange, shimmering layer of liquid armor the stranger seemed to wear and her glowing and floating weapons before she shouted at them in a voice with a hard to place accent.

“The rift must be closed at all costs! Focus on repelling the Void!”

Then she was darting forward, flashing shots of explosive light from her hands and the floating weapons that hovered over her shoulders. 

The onslaught, however, was relentless.

From the depths of the gash outside of their own reality, something moved. A great eye, unfeeling and cruel, wreathed in pale and purple light, arose from the depths. Clouds of movement swirled around it, and it seemed to search for the break in the veil. It was searching for a way into their world.

Fear paralyzed Sivir then, the same fear as when she had been dying and bleeding out. It was potent and consuming, the powerful reminder of just how horribly powerless Sivir was. She could run now, she knew. She was the furthest away from the rift that had exposed the Void to their plane of existence. If she turned now, she could safely get away, could use her power to speed her retreat from the reach of even the void.

She could run, and she could keep running, forever and ever until the day her strength failed her and the awful shapelessness of her destiny finally caught up with her and consumed her whole. She could run, and that would be the only life she would ever know from now on.

The scream that burst out of her throat was coated in power, and Sivir ran forward with her crossblade firmly in hand, the wind at her back and giving a swiftness to her steps that could not otherwise be matched. The same wind carried itself to her companions, and the awful gnawing nausea that the Void seemed to inflict on them suddenly shed away.

Running ahead of all of them, even Nasus, she threw out her crossblade, the sacred Chalicar deep into the Void and directly at the great and terrible eye.

It struck.

Something horrid--a shriek that was not born of this world--trembled through the air, and the tear in reality trembled and bled, collapsing with the violent intensity of a rockfall.

The crossblade swung back and returned to Sivir’s outstretched hand just in time, and then the opening to Void snapped shut, leaving them firmly in their own world. 

It also left them firmly covered in bits of voidling guts. Disgusting.

The last of Sivir’s battle magic eased away, and she was left panting and gasping for breath, still not entirely certain of just what had happened.

Slowly, cautiously, they gathered back together.

Samira kicked at one of the corpses that littered the ground as she sheathed her blade but held on to her pistol. “So the stories were true, then. About the ripping veil between our own world and another.”

“The hell of Icathia.” That was Nasus. He had returned to his normal stature, which was still sizable, but in his eyes now burned a righteous fire that Sivir had never seen before. “The otherworld that would seek to end us all. It is the fight that all Ascended are sworn to hold to, to protect our realm from theirs.”

“The Void.”

All of them turned to the new voice.

The stranger, the woman who had joined their battle halfway through, spoke with a calm certainty to her words. Strange words, not for what was being said, but for the way they were spoken. An unplaceable accent, and slightly rusty, as if the owner were unused to exercising her own vocal chords.

Said owner approached with purpose, her purple eyes fixing Sivir in place as she closed the distance between them, not even sparing a glance to the others. 

“You sealed off the attempted rift here. Thank you.”

The stranger stopped short so close to Sivir that they were nearly toe to toe. Clearly she had no concept of personal space. Not in the way that Samira was like--where invading Sivir’s space was clearly an amusing pastime for her--but in a way that spoke to a simple lack of awareness that “personal space” was even a thing for others.

Unlike with Samira, Sivir did not immediately push her away.

It probably helped that this stranger was very, very attractive.

_ Remember where a pretty face has gotten you before, Sivir...with a blade in the gut and your life bleeding out on the stone and sand. You can’t trust anyone. _

Amazing how quickly that part of her was absolutely stuffed away into a back corner of her mind.

“I’m Sivir.” 

“You may call me...Kai’sa.” She said it haltingly, in the way of someone who had to think too hard about what they were going to say.

Only when the silence stretched between them did Sivir realize she was caught up in staring; staring at those high and smooth cheekbones, at the strange markings on her face, and at the enchantingly sharp purple of those eyes.

“Right...this is Nasus, Taliyah, and Samira. We were just traveling through when...when this happened. How did you get caught up in this?”

Kai’sa let her eyes flicker momentarily over all of them, before settling on one of the distended and curled up bodies of a void creature.

“I...I am searching for a man called Malzahar, if he can even truly be called a man. He willingly gave his soul to the Void many long years ago, and would serve as the herald to open their world into this one. I need to stop him.”

“You can feel where the Void opens up?” Taliyah asked, and for once, Sivir cursed herself for not asking the question first, if only because Kai’sa gave her full attention to the stoneweaver instead.

“It’s...part of who I am. When I was ten, Malzahar opened a rift to the Void in my town and sacrificed everyone there. I was drawn into the rift before it closed. I only just recently returned to this side of reality...as he begins to open the Void more and more. He seeks to bring his master to this world.”

“You survived in the Void for the last how many years?” That was Samira. Her words were tinged with both surprise and respect, a rare thing indeed coming from her.

“I had help.” The strange-second skin on Kai’sa wobbled and shivered like a liquid mirror, and Sivir quickly realized that it was a living thing, a symbiote. Suddenly, everything she had said fit into place

Sivir realized, given the way Kai’sa was now watching them all warily, that this strange woman was waiting to see what their response would be.

“Not exactly like we’re your average band of travelers,” Sivir answered, and surprised herself with the old and familiar teasing drawl to her words. She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken like this to anyone; she couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken with the undertone of suggestion and actually felt like herself.

After a moment’s pause, Samira laughed, full-bellied and loud. “Well, don’t we make quite the party now! Just think of the joke: a mercenary, a princess, a stoneweaver, an Ascended, and a Void-symbiote all walk into a--”

Sivir let out a strangled noise of absolute annoyance already wanting to bury her head in the sand. Enough. She would not have Samira ruin this moment, too.

“I don’t care! Let’s just go!”

“Go where?”

“Oh, do lead the way, Princess.”

“Sivir, if the hell of Icathia is indeed resurging, it means the war for Shurima is ever more critical than--”

“Everyone just stop!” she yelled. Gods, but she needed a drink, a bath, and a bed before they decided on anything.

She started with Nasus. “You, don’t speak unless spoken to.”

Then she rounded on Samira. “You, shuttup.”

She moved her attention next to Taliyah, before Samira could smart something back. “You, no more questions.”

That left one more person.

“You…” Sivir trailed off for a moment as she looked at Kai’sa, at the strange exo-skeleton of bionic Void skin that wrapped skin tight around her, giving her complete protection and alertness. Since when did the Void swallow children only to spit them back out as beautiful women years afterward? Definitely something to think about later. “...with me.”

Sivir swallowed and deliberately avoided the knowing and appraising smirk Samira was giving her.

“Let’s get going. Talk  _ after _ we get food,” Sivir barked out the order, staring down the road toward the next town and not bothering to look behind her as soon as Kai’sa was at her side. 

She could hear the sound of rock moving to confirm that Taliyah was following, and the insufferable noise that was both Nasus and Samira’s voice as they both all too eagerly started answering Taliyah’s question as to why it was that Samira kept referring to Sivir as “princess”.

“Where are we going?” asked Kai’sa after a moment. Nothing else beyond that, and while Sivir normally liked her women to be of few words, she found herself itching to hear more of that odd, low accent.

“Away from here.” Sivir took a moment to think as they continued to walk. “Hopefully toward a bar. Do you know what bars are? No? Well, I think you’ll like them. I think there’s a lot I can show you in this world that you’ll like. But first, I need a drink.”

Or a few drinks, but ones best shared with the beautiful woman who was now at her side. Maybe Sivir could actually start to feel like herself again, and less like the shadow of the person she had been, who was only running away as fast as her feet could take her.

Maybe this day--this week, or really this entire month--had actually gotten a hair better. Maybe.

They just had to find a damn bar first.

And Samira was paying.

That much, Sivir was already sure of.

**Author's Note:**

> With all of the novel-writing I've been focusing on as of late, do I even go here anymore? Anyway. Samira hot. I laugh to think at the interactions between her and everyone else, especially Sivir. GGEZ CLAP.


End file.
